Thought Leadership – More Than Just Intellectual Ping Pong

Laurie Dillon-Schalk has a great post recapping a recent meeting she attended discussion thought leadership. I take issue with a statement she made when she said:

…it gave two hours to dissect an overused term whose deliverable (thought leadership) is critical to business and everyday life.

In fact, I believe that thought leadership is still very under-used. We’ve yet to penetrate the marketing circles with the message about the benefits and realities of leveraging thought leadership and thought leadership marketing. Just look at these Google results.

“Thought Leadership” — 1,090,000 results
“Thought Leadership Marketing” — 344,000 results

compared to…

“Social Media” — 90,400,000
“Social Media Marketing” — 3,290,000

The hype or “overuse” of social media is well beyond that of thought leadership. We’ve got a long way to go. Nevertheless, Laurie’s commentary about the thought leadership definition discussion is a telling one.

As it turns out, the group collectively agreed that being original or first to market with an idea does not necessarily constitute thought leadership. That thought leadership needs to also result in impact. That the leadership of the thought includes relevancy, application, resources, action and impact. There was also talk that thought leadership is a special thing and a special person who synthesizes in a special way. I added that thought leadership can be unintentional – an idea or meme that catches like wild fire., Defining thought leadership and what makes it so. « Social Wisdom

Thought leaders are not always the first or the most original. In fact, in our view where we merge thought leadership, insurgent marketing and social media into a go-to-market approach, often the underdogs or insurgents are the preeminent thought leaders and not the first-to-markets or the big dogs in the industry. Laurie’s group hit thought leadership on the head when they declared that it must include components of “relevancy, application, resources, action and impact.” In fact, I’ve added those components to the thought leadership framework map under Laurie’s name. Those fit nicely with how others have defined the discipline.

More to the point, Laurie mentioned the group’s perspective to see thought leadership as something that “is a special thing and a special person who synthesizes in a special way.” Once again, we see the reference to thought leadership and its linkage to an actual person, which was recently featured as a key shortcoming in the Bliss PR thought leadership and social media benchmarking study,  in much of the thought leadership exhibited in the thought leadership of professional service firms. Thought leaders and thought leadership are, in more ways that not, inextricably linked.